Google finally seems to be getting its act together. A few months ago we went on and on about the slow pace of ICS rollouts, but now it seems the Android team managed to pull off a proper update rollout.

Last night, one of our lab mice lit up with a system update and kindly asked for a reboot. We were happy to oblige and we spent the better part of the morning playing around with Jelly Bean on a Nexus S, the continental I9023 version to be precise, all stock and unlocked. We are still waiting for our Nexus 7 sample, the Nexus Galaxy has yet to receive a Jelly Bean OTA update, but that doesn’t really matter since our Vienna team misplaced the sample in a mosh pit.

So we are in a rather awkward situation – we will have to get to know Jelly Bean on the oldest and slowest device to receive the update. However, this also opens up a number of possibilities. The Nexus S rocks a 1GHz A8 processor with 512MB of RAM, a far cry from today’s high-end Android phones, with multicore chips hitting 1.5GHz and more. Basically the Nexus S is here to embarrass Android phone makers who failed to deliver timely updates for their phones. That would be Samsung, HTC, Motorola, LG, Sony, Sony Ericsson, ZTE, Huawei, Lenovo, Acer and every other company on God’s green earth that ever launched an Android handset.

The 4.1.1 update itself is somewhat smaller than the previous ICS update (114MB vs. 128MB), but then again Jelly Bean is more of an evolutionary update than a major overhaul of the OS like ICS. It’s the “tick” in the Android tick-tock update cycle. The UI remained largely unchanged, which is a good thing. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The unlock screen now features a shortcut to Google Now and a redesigned touch indicator. We think the understated circle on the ICS screen looked a bit better.

As you probably know already, Google Now, coupled with a great voice search engine, is the headline feature of Jelly Bean. However, since we just got the update we really can’t say much about Google Now. It needs a few days to figure out your daily routine and make any sense whatsoever.

Voice search worked like a charm and it did not seem to mind my thick Balkanese accent too much. Compared to Apple’s Siri, the voice sounds a whole lot better, a bit more human, and a little less Al Gore-ish or Mitt Romney-ish. Google demoed the service in American English with a nice female voice to boot. However, our sample thought a British accent delivered in a male voice would work better and it does. Well, at least it does for me, I’m a Monty Python fan.

Unlike Siri, Google does not rely on voice that much. Cards are the name of the game and it is possible to switch off voice altogether, or limit it to headphones only. It all works very well indeed, but I simply can’t escape the feeling that the Nexus S is a bit underpowered to cope with voice search. Also, Google Now takes a couple of seconds to load and seems sluggish. Still, it’s pretty impressive to see such functionality on a two-year old phone. Sorry iPhone 4 users, Google out-Appled you this time around.

You’re cooking with butter

Although Google Now is the headline grabbing feature, there’s a lot more to Jelly Bean. Project Butter is just what the doctor ordered for the Nexus S. Yes, everything feels a bit faster. Transitions are seamless, scrolling between home screens or through the app drawer is faster and smoother, but to be perfectly honest it doesn’t not seem all that quicker than ICS. The difference is a bit more pronounced in the task manager, or while scrolling through the widget drawer. It’s an improvement, no doubt about that, there’s a lot more fluidity across the whole UI, but we were hoping for a bit more. Project Butter should make more of a difference on faster devices – we just get the feeling it’s running into a wall on the old 1GHz Hummingbird.

Over the past few weeks Google updated a range of apps, including Google Music, YouTube, Maps, Google+ and many others. Jelly Bean also brings a bunch of updates to camera and gallery apps, as well as countless minor tweaks. Currents and Play Magazines are also bundled in the update, but for some reason Chrome is not. In any case the end result is impressive. Although ICS and even Gingerbread users can also enjoy most of the updates, Jelly Bean offers them right out of the box, with Google+ integration and a host of clever tricks. It all just feels a lot more polished than in previous Android versions.

Personally I found Currents very interesting, even on a low-res 4-inch screen, and I can’t wait to check it out on the Nexus 7. It’s just one of those things you need to try yourself, it seemed like a daft idea when Google showed it off, but now I’m sold.

The revamped Camera app is also a nice touch, with a simple slide-to-review feature and a smooth photo roll which allows you to delete unwanted photos by simply flicking them off the screen. The Gallery app brings an improved slideshow feature, better animations and zoom control. However, on more than one occasion we noticed a bit of lag, something that we didn’t experience in ICS.

Google is very proud of Android notifications, and rightly so. Notifications are practically Android's trademark feature, Google pioneered them and proved that it can out-innovate Apple from time to time, although it is just a matter of time before iPhone fanatics start saying that Apple came up with them first. Joking aside, with Jelly Bean notifications have really come of age. Forget about the smooth UI, new apps and features – in normal everyday use notifications will make more of a difference. Users can expand certain notifications, allowing them to read emails or return a phone call or text straight from the notification dropdown. You can also turn off annoying notifications in app settings. [i.e. Facebook. Ed]

Performance

And now for some serious stuff, a few performance figures. Surely, a simple software update can’t work miracles on a two-year old phone? Think again. We included the Nexus S in our standard phone chart last year and updated the results with ICS a few months ago. Back then it scored 6469ms in Sunspider, with the stock ICS browser. However, with a bit of Jelly Bean grease, it managed 2845ms and 3750ms with the stock browser and Chrome respectively. These figures place it on par with the LG Optimus X2 and even Samsung’s Galaxy Note, both on Gingerbread. It almost sounds too good to be true. However, we see the same trend in Browsermark. A few months ago we scored 35753 with the ICS stock browser. Now the score is 53312, again with the stock browser. Chrome scored 58880, after failing the bench a couple of times. To say that we are impressed would be an understatement.

However, hardware-oriented benchmarks like Antutu and Quadrant don’t seem to like Jelly Bean as much as browser benches. We were somewhat baffled to learn that Quadrant and Antutu scores were about 20 percent lower on Jelly Bean vs. ICS. We tried running them a few times, with a cool and rebooted phone, just to make sure throttling had nothing to do with it. Some benchmarks did not run at all, so we could be looking at some compatibility issues. Speaking of which, some apps started to misbehave after the update. Viber was the worst offender, it started throwing its toys out of the pram as soon as the phone was updated, so we were forced to disable it.

Conclusion

Is Jelly Bean all that it’s cracked up to be? Yes and no. It is by no means revolutionary, it’s basically Ice Cream Sandwich done right, with a smoother UI, a few new features, some interesting apps and new notifications options. Tick - tock, remember?

It might not sound like much, but all these incremental improvements come together to create a much better user experience. Yes, user experience, a term coined by spinners to make simple, mundane stuff sound more interesting. However, a mobile OS should be simple, fast, responsive, easy to use in everyday life and well thought through. That’s exactly what Jelly Bean is. Google took an already excellent operating system and with a few minor tweaks it managed to make it even better, that’s all, and that’s a good thing.

But here's the problem. Most users will never get to enjoy Jelly Bean or even ICS the way Google intended. While Google is hard at work improving Android, making it faster and sleeker, phone makers are doing the exact opposite. They are still skinning Android, although skinning is not the right word for what they are doing, as their changes and “improvements” go a lot deeper than this innocent cosmetic term implies. The additional bloat is largely useless and it makes updates a hassle. So, for lack of a better word, they are ruining Android.

It is a bit like buying a brand new car, repainting it with a few ugly decals, then sticking tacky chrome alloys and plastic body kits on it. Just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should.

Google's pride and joy, the Galaxy Nexus smartphone, is finally back on Google Play Store after brief absence caused by an injuction in Apple's lawsuit against Samsung.

According to Androidpolice.com, the original shipping date was set for two to three weeks but was changed to one to two weeks. It is still not clear on how will Google and Samsung deal with the aforementioned alleged infringement but according to various sources, it might have something to do with an update that has been in the works.

The court decided to temporary lift the ban on sale of the Galaxy Nexus but Apple still has not responded which means that device could easily dissapear if Apple decides to pursue the injuction.

In any case, the Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ is now available for US $349.00 and ships in one to two weeks. You can find it here.

Quite expectedly, the legal battle between Apple and Samsung is far from over, despite fruit themed toymaker Apple winning the last round. Apple has won an injunction against Samsung's Galaxy Nexus but Samsung filed a motion to stay the injunction over the course of the appeal.

Samsung argues in its case that the Court based its decision on "legally insuficient evidence" that Samsung and Apple are competitors. The company claims the order does not comply with Federal Circuit's directive, whereby the said loss of market share would have to be "substantial". Additionally, Samsung maintains that such a loss would have to be attributable to the infringing feature, rather than mere presence of a product on the market.

Samsung claims that the Court's "causation as to the 604 patent" was at least questionable, insisting that Siri is a different feature than the "unified search covered by the 604 patent". Samsung is apparently narrowing the scope of the patent, similarly to how some Apple's patents were handled earlier.

It is said that the judge will not stay the injunction for the entire duration of the appeal, but that she may do so until the Federal Circuit decides whether to stay it.

Just a few hours before the kickof of its Google I/O developers conference yesterday, Google has dropped the price of its Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ smartphone down to US $349.

Previously priced at US $399 the Google Nexus HSPA+ will also feature Google's latest Andorid 4.1 Jelly Bean OS. Currently it is only available in the US of A and will be compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile as well as other GMS carriers around the Europe.

The good part of the story is that it will be one of the first smartphones to get Google's newest Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS.

British retailers have started listing a white version of Google’s new flagship Galaxy Nexus.

Like the previous Nexus S, the new model also features a white back, while the curved glass front remains all-black. We believe it looks quite a bit better than the old Nexus, as the sides are white, too, so there is no black bezel this time around. It would be interesting to see it with a black battery cover, as it would look like a proper ice cream sandwich.

In addition to the stylish white model, Samsung and Google are expected to roll out the 32GB version in a few weeks as well. Yummy.

There has been a lot of talk about the Galaxy Nexus, Google’s flagship superphone and the first device to feature Android 4.0. Once again Google contracted Samsung to make the hardware, but hardware aside this phone will probably be better known as the first phone to get the highly anticipated Ice Cream Sandwich Android 4.0 operating system.

We got this test device shortly before Xmas and we spent quite some time with it. Since it has a new operating system with a few novel features we gave it a somewhat more comprehensive test, in order to take a good feel of what to expect from Android phones in 2012.

The new operating system fuses some features from Honeycomb Android 3.x and Gingerbread 2.3 and Android 4.0 is Google’s first crack at a proper OS that will tend both to tablets and smartphones. The version on our sample was 4.0.1 and at press time it was the latest OS variant, despite the fact that we that US got 4.0.2, with the 4.0.3 update being just around the corner.

The phone comes in an unusually big box that contains the phone itself, a battery, power adaptor, USB cable and headphones. It’s what most people need and of course car accessories can be purchased as separate pack.

Let’s first talk about the specs. The phone has a dual-core Texas Instruments OMAP 4460 clocked at 1.2GHz, with PowerVR SGX540 graphics. The same graphics core was used in the old Nexus S, so we are hardly impressed. It comes with 1024MB memory, but during testing we’ve seen that you had some 600MB to 700MB available for apps. It’s a quad-band phone supporting 850/900/1800 and 1900MHz frequencies and UMTS 900/1700 and 2100MHz.

It comes with a gorgeous 16-million color 1280x720 4.65-inch Super AMOLED HD touchscreen and right off the bat, we should note that it’s the best screen ever used on any Android phone. The new Galaxy also features a rather underwhelming 5MP camera with autofocus, LED flash and 1080p video support, along with a 1.3MP front facing camera for video calls and Skype. The phone supports USB 3.0, Wlan 802.11n and lower, has 16GB memory, but once again there is no microSD slot for expansion. We were surprised to see that phone features a barometer, along with the more or less usual proximity sensor, light sensor, compass and DLNA certification and NFC. With the right app it will tell you the actual weather conditions around you. It might sound like a gimmick, but hikers, bikers and skiers could find it pretty handy indeed.

NFC is a nice feature but most people still don’t have a good use for this new technology. It’s interesting to mention that in Vienna, Austria, you can buy an underground ticket via NFC for a few years now and this phone should work with the system, but we didn’t try this.

Despite the all-plastic build, the new Nexus feels pretty good in your hands, too. You can tell that the build quality is very good, and just as with any other Samsung smartphone the power button is located at the right hand side, not at the top where many users will expect it. This has to be a thing that you get use to after a while, but it still feels like the power button should be at the top. The left hand side of the phone has volume keys and the bottom of the phone has 3.5 inch headset in, microphone and micro USB for data and charging.

Like its predecessor, the Galaxy Nexus is an all-plastic phone, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. Samsung used some pretty high quality materials and craftsmanship is excellent. The upside of using plastics is that the Nexus weighs just 135g, which is pretty good for a 4.65-inch phone. It’s also worth noting that the screen has a pretty small bezel, so the entire phone measures 135.5x67.9x8.9mm and it is somewhat more compact than you may expect. For comparison, the old Nexus S measures 123.9x63x10.9mm and weighs 129g, yet it has a 4-inch screen.

The right hand side also has a docking connector, the “three golden dots” that should help you dock and charge your phone faster, but so far this docking station still hasn’t been released. It could be useful down the road, as USB charging is pretty slow, but this applies to all new high-end smartphones.

The battery cover feels really good in your hand and it’s very elastic, but taking off the cover and putting it back on for the first time will be a traumatic experience. As the cover has many locks, it will take some force to open or close it, but we didn’t break anything.

One thing you notice immediately is that Galaxy Nexus doesn’t have a microSD slot and many people will miss the opportunity to plug in an extra card to increase the storage. We tested the 16GB version and apparently the 32GB version should also be available soon.

Once you turn the phone on, you can immediately see that the screen is gorgeous. This is without a doubt the best screen ever used on an Android phone. It’s huge, with 4.65 inches is among the biggest screens we’ve ever seen, and with 1280x720 resolution it looks very crisp. The colors are vivid, HD videos are clear and overall it’s great to look it at. Overall we prefer it over the 3.5-inch hi res iPhone Retina display and the 5.3-inch screen used on Samsung’s Galaxy Note.

The TFT display of LG’s Optimus 2X looks pathetic next to the Galaxy Nexus, and this obviously applies to any other SLCD screen out there. The screen is definitely what makes this phone great. Bear this in mind, we rescaled the screenshots to 50 percent, or 640x360, so you can imagine how the full resolution looks on such a small screen.

Transitioning to Android 4.0 will be easy to for any Android user, but you will miss some keys. Galaxy Nexus doesn’t have any hardware keys but it has three soft keys that will take you back, home or list all the running applications.

This third key will open one of the greatest things that we’ve seen on Android 4.0, it’s the task manager and as long as you don’t want to see an application running, you just swipe it left or right. It works like a charm and many people will appreciate it.

Another Android 4.0 feature is face unlock and this can be either a good or bad thing. In good light conditions, at good angle and if you are steady it usually works fine, but in darker light conditions, in shaky underground commutes or at a awkward angle, it will simply tell you that it doesn’t recognize you. You come frustrated if you need to open a phone many times, e.g. in a grocery store to see a grocery list as you will always have to scan your face. If it fails the second option is a well-known pattern. You also can forget face recognition on sunny days if you happen to be in the shade, as the camera hasn’t got enough dynamic range to cope with such high contrast lighting conditions. We believe most users will stick to the regular unlock screen.

One other new feature is data usage that can tell how much data have you used of your mobile network or Wi-Fi. It’s useful and can turn your phone data if you cross the limit. We liked this feature and it will come in handy for anyone who doesn’t have an unlimited data plan, since it eliminates the need for third party apps.

What we didn’t like about ICS is that you miss the properties key that you have on many Android 2.3 phones. Getting into settings is possible via shortcut, but not via any dedicated button. Inside the Android Market application you have a new settings key on top of the application that gets you to my apps, accounts, settings or help. You get used to it after a while.

The browser is a bit improved and works like a charm. The OMAP 4 4460 dual-core at 1.2 GHz was enough to push everything quite fast on the spacious 720p screen.

Let’s also mention that some applications didn’t work in Android 4.0. For example, we could not get Viber to work on our sample. For those who haven’t tried it, Viber is a free voice over IP application that lets you send text messages, locations and pictures to everyone who uses it. It doesn’t need a username and pass and it’s linked to your phone number and can be cuter than Skype. Skype did work well. However, Viber is not the only application that doesn’t yet work under Android 4.0. People are complaining about compatibility issues all over the market, but Viber seems to be one of the most popular apps affected.

New widgets and widget management are also a nice touch. However, making a shortcut is much more complicated compared to Android 2.3. You need to go to applications, widgets in order to make a shortcut. This is just a touch away in Android 2.3 which feels weird that Google managed to mess this up.

The 5MP camera makes nice pictures in good lighting conditions and flash will help in dark conditions. It’s not spectacular, but it will help you make some decent pictures. It is really fast, faster than many other we’ve seen on other Android dual-core phone, but it’s still not better than the cameras on the iPhone 4 or 4S.

I am sure you want to know what toll the dual-core processor and 4.65-inch screen take on battery life. Well, as usual the answer is that this depends on what do you do with your phone. Of course, the phone can sit in airplane mode for days without recharging, but in real life, a few longer phone calls a day, Wi-Fi browsing and video playing it will last for day or so. Continuous videos or browsing for a few hours will drain your battery quite fast. It felt that Galaxy Nexus has better battery life than LG Optimus 2X, but not by much.

Let’s also mention that watching HD videos on YouTube can get this phone rather warm in the upper part of the phone, close to camera. We suspect that this is where the CPU is. It won’t burn you and it's not too uncomfortable, but you will feel the heat.

Conclusion

This is definitely the best smartphone we had the pleasure to test so far, unless you are an Apple lover and want nothing but Apple, of course.

The Galaxy Nexus has some downsides. The 5MP camera could have been a bit better, but it powers up and takes shots really fast. The biggest downer for us is the lack of a microSD slot but despite that, I could easily recommend this phone to any Android lover. Interestingly, the previous Nexus S shared the same foibles, but Google didn’t seem too keen to address them.

We like the vanilla Android 4.0 experience and the new OS has some pretty nice features to offer. In six months will be available on many phones. By late 2012, it will probably start to be the dominant OS, but with Android these transitions take way too long, even on Google’s own devices, let alone those from Samsung, HTC or any other phone maker.

The Galaxy Nexus is the real deal, it’s a great phone with a beautiful screen and if you are after a phone that’s great for browsing, emails and navigation, it’s probably the best choice right now.

Our sample was supplied by Ditech and the company sells it for €519 in Austria, but it will ship it free to most parts of Europe. In case you find 16GB of storage is not enough, you will have to wait a few weeks for the 32GB version. You can buy one here.

We got our hands on the European retail version of Galaxy Nexus and despite news that US phone come with Android 4.0.2 or even 4.0.3, our version was lower than both. We can tell you that so far Galaxy Nexus for Europe only speaks Android 4.0.1.

We tried to check for OTA (Over The Air) updates and we didn’t get a positive response. So far the phone claims that 4.0.1 is the best version and only one available for this phone and last time we tried was a few minutes ago.

We’ve been playing with the phone for two days now, and we could not find any audio, or internet related issues. HSDPA works just fine probably and WLAN performance is at expected levels.

It was interesting to see that Samsung re-flashed these phones and you can clearly see that the original seal has been opened, and we suspect that they flashed the voice bug update, the glitch that originally delayed the introduction of this phone.

A few sources close to retailers all over Europe are telling us that Google's Galaxy Nexus is going to be slightly delayed all over Europe.

It has already appeared in the UK, but the volume bug is causing issues over there and the fact that customers are not happy about it is the main reason of the most recent delay. Samsung and Google have decided to wait for an update before they ship to phones to retail / etail stores and end customers.

We don’t know what happens to US launch, but obviously apart from Expansys there are no Galaxy Nexus phones available. Verizon should be the next to launch the Nexus, sooner rather than later. Google is working hard on polishing the kinks and it could happen that you see Galaxy Nexus in some markets within two weeks if not earlier.

Samsung is simply telling retailers / etailers to hold their breath for any promotions, pricing or God forbid availability promise.

Google really needs to learn how to launch phones. Weeks after Galaxy Nexus and Ice Cream Sandwich were demonstrated to the more than eager public, the phone and the OS have yet to appear.

Although no firm launch dates were set, the Galaxy Nexus was expected to launch in mid-November, but all rumoured launch days have come and gone, with no launch in sight.

Business Insider is now reporting that Verizon has confirmed the launch was pushed back to December, but there is still no word on the exact date. In the meantime European retailers are also stating that the phone should be available in KW48 or KW49, or the week of November 28 at the earliest.

It's worth noting that the new Nexus has been on sale in Britain for about a week now, but availability is limited to say the least. Hopefully Google will manage to fully implement Flash support and resolve some pesky volume bugs by then.

Google’s new flagship Galaxy Nexus is set to ship in all major markets by the end of the week and early benchmarks indicate that the new googlephone will be second to none.

Anand put new Nexus through its paces and compared it to some of the fastest smartphones on the market today. As one might expect, the results were impressive. Nexus virtually wiped out the competition in all benchmarks.

In Javascript it was about 10 percent faster than Motorola’s new Droid RAZR and some 20 percent faster than Cupertino’s iPhone 4S. Scores in the Rightware BrowserMark were equally impressive. With 98272 marks Nexus easily pushed ahead of the field, with the 4S trailing in second with 87841 and RAZR ranked third with 85271. One of the best Android phones on the market, Samsung’s Galaxy S2 ranked third with 55144, while Google’s last generation Nexus S scores 37957.

However, in the graphics department Apple still clings to the lead thanks to its SGX 543MP2 graphics core and even the Samsung Galaxy S2, with Mali-400 graphics is faster. The new Nexus still relies on the venerable SGX 540 core, which was also used in the old Nexus S.

And now for some bad news. Early adopters are already reporting bugs and software glitches. Pocketlint was contacted by several owners who claim their Galaxy Nexus phones have a very annoying volume control bug, which turns the volume down and doesn’t let users turn it back up again. In addition, users are also miffed by the fact that Google was unable to provide Flash support in time for launch, which is supposedly Adobe’s fault, as it failed to upgrade the mobile version to Android 4.0.